African dissent on no-fly zone
counts By M K Bhadrakumar
"Here is the true meaning and value of
compassion and nonviolence when it helps us to see
the enemy's point of view, to hear his questions,
to know his assessment of ourselves. For, from his
view we may indeed see the basic weaknesses of our
own condition, and if we are mature, we may learn
and grow and profit from the wisdom of the
brothers who are called the opposition."
- "Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break
Silence" speech by Martin Luther King Jr,
April 4, 1967, New York
At the height
of the Egyptian uprising, well-known American
investigative journalist Seymour Hersh said in an
interview with al-Jazeera that the United States
had a "Plan B" in the event of Hosni Mubarak
stepping down. According to Hersh, it was none
other than Amr Moussa - "whether he knows or not".
There is
nothing so far to show Moussa
doesn't know.
He's far too well connected
not to know - career diplomat and foreign minister
for over 45 years and secretary general of Arab
League (AL) since 2001. He hopes to succeed
Mubarak as Egypt's next president.
Moussa delivers ... Moussa's
bid got great fillip by the AL decision Saturday
to recommend imposition of a no-fly zone over
Libya. His star has risen far above Mohammed
ElBaradei's. Two major Arab countries opposed the
AL statement - Syria and Algeria - but Moussa
rammed it through, thanks to the AL heavyweights
clamoring for democracy to succeed and autocracy
to end - Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Oman, the United
Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Yemen, Jordan.
What bizarre drama! The plain truth is
that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)
and the European Union (EU) commanded AL to speak
since they need a fig leaf to approach the United
Nations Security Council.
The EU foreign
policy chief, Catherine Ashton, was in Cairo on
Saturday by Moussa's side to ensure America's
"Plan B" delivered. And he did. Promptly, the US,
Britain, France and Canada "welcomed" the AL
statement. NATO will meet on Tuesday to tone up
its stance on Libya.
Britain and France,
who spearhead the breathtaking campaign to
mobilize Arab "support" for NATO intervention in
Libya, have had a dream run. British Prime
Minister David Cameron and newly-appointed French
Foreign Minister Alain Juppe visited Cairo to
explore how far the military junta could take
charge of the oil-rich eastern Libyan province of
Cyrenica.
... but Africa dissents
The Western powers had earlier mentioned
the AL and African Union (AU) in the same breath
as representing "regional opinion". Now it seems
the AU isn't so important - it has become an
embarrassment. African leaders are proving to be
tough nuts to crack compared to Arab
playboy-rulers.
Unsurprisingly, there is a
virtual media blackout on the AU's activities on
Libya. It is, therefore, useful to recapitulate.
"The [AU] council reaffirms its firm commitment to
the respect of the unity and territorial integrity
of Libya, as well as its rejection of any form of
foreign intervention in Libya," Ramtane Lamamra,
AU commissioner for peace and security stated in
Addis Abbaba. The AU's 15-member peace and
security council decided to "put in lace a
high-level ad-hoc committee" to monitor the Libyan
crisis.
The leaders of South Africa,
Uganda, Mauritania, the Democratic Republic of
Congo (DRC) and Mali would form the ad-hoc
committee. "The ad hoc committee was set up ... to
engage with all parties in Libya, facilitate an
inclusive dialogue among them, and engage the
African Union partners ... for the speedy
resolution of the crisis in Libya," the bloc said.
Lamamra said events in Libya needed "urgent
African action" to bring about an end to the
hostilities.
Most important, the AU "took
note of the readiness of the government of Libya
to engage in the path of political reforms. The
council expressed the solidarity of the AU with
Libya, and stressed the legitimacy of the
aspirations of the Libyan peoples for democracy,
political reforms, justice, peace and security as
well as economic and social development".
Specter of disintegration The
paradox is, if you accept the principle of
ascertaining the "regional opinion", then the AU's
opinion becomes, arguably, more important to know
than the AL's. Libya is as much an African country
as an Arab country - if not more. The narrative of
Libyan developments as a template of "Arab
awakening" overlooks that reverberations and
after-shocks of what happens are going to be felt
deep inside Africa. As prominent Russian scholar
on the region Yevgeny Satanovsky recently said:
It [unrest] won't be limited to the
Middle East and North Africa ... The region will
go through what Europe experienced in 1914-18.
These processes always take a long time ... In
Europe, the shooting started in 1914 and didn't
stop until 1945 ... We have not seen what would
happen to the other Gulf monarchies. We have not
yet seen the end of the unrest that has gripped
North Africa and the Middle East.
Algeria could still follow Libya's suit
and Morocco might do the same. In January we saw
Sudan split peacefully, but separatist elements
have not been extinguished there. Former
colonies tied together in unnatural
conglomerates in the past by the English or the
French never became integrated states. If this
is so, we may still see disintegration of
Nigeria, Kenya and other African
countries.
Therefore, the British
Foreign Office is opportunistic when it says the
AL statement "is very significant and provides
important regional support" for the idea of a
no-fly zone. Abdullah bin Abdul-Aziz of Saudi
Arabia, Hamad ibn Isa Al Khalifa of Bahrain,
Qaboos Bin Al Said of Oman, Abdullah II of Jordan
- these autocrats cannot be hailed as stakeholders
in Libya's march to democracy.
The Gulf
Cooperation Council (GCC) regimes are tottering on
the abyss and themselves hoping NATO will salvage
them. Their rulers keep their personal wealth of
tens or hundreds of billions of dollars hoarded in
Western banks and the umbilical cord cannot easily
be broken.
Scarred memories
But, how is it that African states are
different? First, when they hear Cameron or French
President Nikolas Sarkozy or NATO secretary
general Anders Fogh Rasmussen speak of military
intervention in North Africa, it rings a bell in
their collective consciousness - of scarred
memories of imperial domination, the horrendous
crimes that the British, French or Dutch
perpetrated on African people. They know how
difficult it will be to get a NATO army to vacate
its occupation of Africa. (Afghan President Hamid
Karzai said on Saturday: "I would like to ask NATO
and the US with honor and humbleness and not with
arrogance to stop their operations in our land. We
are a very tolerant people but now our tolerance
has run out.")
Africans know NATO will
eventually slither its way into the heart of their
resource-rich continent from the North African
beachhead. So, the AU faces an existential problem
- unlike the GGC client states or Jordan, which
have no conception of national liberation. The
only "Arab revolt" Abdullah or Abdullah II ever
knew is what British intelligence and Lawrence of
Arabia financed in the debris of the Ottoman
Empire a hundred years ago.
Besides, what
dreads the AU countries is that Libya has a
history of disunity. It was only in 1951 that King
Idris unified the three autonomous provinces of
Tripolitania, Fezzan and Cyrenica. In the wake of
the current strife, centrifugal tendencies have
quickly resurfaced. Libya has dozens of tribes and
Muammar Gaddafi knit together a tenuous alliance
of some tribes but tribal feuds are common. The
African countries share similar experience.
To be sure, Western intervention in Libya
will necessitate at some stage involvement in
"nation-building' - interference in the domestic
affairs in the post-Gaddafi period. The native
peoples will resent this involvement. And in the
fullness of time, only the Islamist forces stand
to gain. The stunning political reality of Libya
is that Islam is the only unifying factor for the
tribes and provinces of that fragile nation.
African leaders are genuinely nervous that
the US is being myopic about the complexities
involved. President Barack Obama should get to
know them better, call them up from the Oval
Office, reach out to them and consult them and
ascertain whether they will accept NATO
intervention in Libya. They are the real
"stakeholders" - not the playboy kings, sheikhs or
sultans from the bleached Arabian deserts. King
would be pleased.
Ambassador M K
Bhadrakumar was a career diplomat in the
Indian Foreign Service. His assignments included
the Soviet Union, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Germany,
Afghanistan, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Kuwait and
Turkey.
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